Guinea-Bissau Creole
Guinea-Bissau Creole, also known as Kiriol or Crioulo, is a creole language whose lexicon derives mostly from Portuguese. It is spoken in Guinea Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia. It is also called by its native speakers as guinensi, kriyol, or portuguis.
| Guinea-Bissau Creole | |
|---|---|
| Kiriol, Crioulo | |
| guinensi, kriyol, kiriol, purtuguis 'kriolo' | |
| Native to | Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, The Gambia |
Native speakers | L1: 350,000 (2013–2022) L2: 1.5 million (2013–2022) |
Portuguese Creole
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pov |
| Glottolog | uppe1455 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAC-ab |
Guinea-Bissau Creole is spoken as a native tongue by 250,000 Bissau-Guineans and as a second language by 1,000,000.
A variant of Guinea-Bissau Creole is also spoken in southern Senegal, mainly in the region of Casamance, a former Portuguese colony, which is known as Portuguis Creole or Casamance Creole. Creole is the majority language of the inhabitants of the Casamance region and is used as a language of commerce.
Standard Portuguese is the official language of Guinea-Bissau, but Guinea-Bissau Creole is the language of trade, informal literature and entertainment. It is not used in either news media, parliament, public services or educational programming.